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The Frakes and Burklin families both believe that healthy relationships with government officials are critical for the credibility of Christian outreach in China. Good "relationships" in China are more like a marriage than friendship. Called guanxi, relationships are long-standing ties that obligate partners to help each other. A Chinese proverb says someone who doesn't honor relationships has "a wolf heart and dog lungs." Fulton says effective mission work in China depends on the quality of these relationships. "Wherever there is a successful work with open churches, there are long-standing personal ties."

TEL-China has kept a low profile, but it achieved a breakthrough when Frakes ran down a petty thief on the streets of Guangzhou. He was pleased to find himself hailed in local newspapers. After that, local authorities gave Frakes new latitude. As he brought new individuals to a state-approved Three Self church, its pastors defended him from critics.

For Werner and Erik Burklin, establishing good relations with government officials followed a different pathway. Werner, following in the footsteps of his missionary parents, returned to China in 1981. He jumped off the train in Jiangxi, en route to Shanghai, and was picked up by the police.

"I want to go home," Werner told the police chief. He pulled out an outdated identification card he had used as a child. The policeman stared at the card, turned to Burklin, and smiled.

"Welcome home," the officer said, shaking his hand firmly. That police chief's acceptance sparked in Werner's mind the idea of working with Chinese officials.

"I had to make a decision," Werner said. "People in Hong Kong told me not to have anything to do with the official church." He started to visit illegal house churches. In 1982, a house church leader showed Werner the way to a Three Self church, but would not enter the official church with him. That deeply disturbed Werner. After Werner walked inside that Three Self church, he says, "I found out that they were believers just like me."

So the elder Burklin launched China Partner. The new Nanchang Bible Institute, temporarily located in a former detergent factory, provides a vital resource to the region's growing churches. "Our morality has really gone down in this city," institute director Lin Feng says, "but our churches are filling up."

In the early years, the local Bible institute had many needs, from toilets to paper for its copying machines. The Burklins have made possible quite a bit more than that. "This area is still pretty poor, and the school tries to educate some of the poorest of the poor," Erik says.

China Partner works with 17 seminaries and Bible institutes in China. The Rev. Lou, a local Three Self leader familiar with the Burklins' work, says China Partner provides critical resources for leadership training. "What we on the local level want is people like the Burklins to come and help us teach our young pastors about the Word of God."

Frakes and Erik Burklin acknowledge that the road to ministry in China has hazards. One year ago in Nanchang, for example, China Partner sponsored a meeting of the official church and Western mission leaders. The occasion was a triumph for the Burklins' diplomacy, but there were also confrontations. A leader from Youth for Christ asked pastor Lin if an American missionary could come openly to China to evangelize. Pastor Lin, who serves at the pleasure of local communist officials, suddenly got red in the face and declared, "That is illegal! That is not permitted here!"

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October 7 2002, Vol. 46, No. 11